Nothing So Normal
by TaelynHawker
Summary: The end, when it comes is so much more mundane than that. Wincest, Angst, Character Death.


-1**Title: **Nothing so normal.

**Rating: **PG, maybe PG-13.

**Characters: **Sam/Dean, Bobby.

**Summary: **The end, when it comes is so much more mundane than that.

**Warnings: **Incest, Angst, Character Death.

**Author's Note:** My brief, and by brief I mean the forty minutes it took to write this, break from Orpheus Drowning. Has nothing at all to do with that storyline for those of you reading that story. This little story is actually inspired by the anniversary of my mother's death, which is in two days. I don't know how she'd feel about her death inspiring a short story about two (in my mind and somewhere in the back of Kripke's too) incestuous brothers, but she always got me so I think she'd find it amusing at least.

………………………………...

It isn't demons, or a ghost, or a shape-shifter that gets him in the end.

The end, when it comes is so much more mundane than that.

This things that is killing him has taken his voice from him, worried away at his left femur until the bone snapped, has left him breathless from even the slightest physical activities, and given him a small lump on his spine where it's eating away there too. 

It pisses him off that Sammy went ahead and risked his life to break Dean from his deal, and here Dean is five years later, in a hospital bed looking death in the eye again.

But there's nothing Sam can do to save him from this, no last minute heroics. Dean's a dead man.

Cancer is still an unbeatable enemy. There's no magic gun to shoot it with. No spell to contain it.

And Sam knows better than to try a faith healer again.

When Dean finally admits it to Sam, that it's incurable and irreparable, Sam looks like he might vomit. He already knows, the doctors told Sam days ago, but Dean's been avoiding having any kind of talk with Sam about it. But it's time now, the tests are sure, there's no saving Dean Winchester this time.

Dean grasps his little brother's neck and pulls him towards him, kissing him hard on the lips. He swallows the sob Sam can't keep in, darts his tongue in to taste his brother. He's bitter like coffee and sweet like the sugar that always coats the bottom of Sam's cups. He tastes like Sam, and like that first breath of fresh air after days of being in Hell before Sammy took him back out again, leaving his own arm behind in payment. 

The only Heaven that Dean has ever known is his brother. He would tell Sam that, but then Sam would really cry like a bitch, and it hurts to speak anyways now.

…….

It's bitterly cold the day Dean dies, three weeks after being admitted into the hospital, one week after discharging himself.

Sam can't breath; the air so cold it stabs at his face and his throat.

His tears really are frozen to his face.

He's pretty sure Dean would want it that way; no chick flick moments, even here at the end.

Sam stays for a long time, holding his brother's limp body in his slowly numbing arm. He doesn't care for the cold or for the snow that falls. It's a New York winter and this had been the place Dean had wanted to be in for reasons he never explained to Sam except that Sam can remember staying up here once.

He stares with unblinking eyes at his brother's pale face; drawn and thin and too still. His full lips are losing color, but Sam can still see his name resting there; Dean's last, hoarse word. His eyes are faded and Sam knows he should close them but he wants to remember the color for just a little while longer; the way they used to darken when he kissed Sam after any hunt that didn't go quite as planned, like kissing Sam would keep him safe.

Sam leans his head forward, hair brushing over Dean's face as he rests his forehead against his brothers.

The cold slows his blood, slows his mind, calms his breathing. It feels nothing like it at all, but Sam imagines it feels like every night he's ever spent in his brother's arms.

…….

The hunt that Sam takes after Dean's death is for a djinn.

It's been a little over a week since Dean died and Sam burned his body and watched the ashes scatter over the snowy ground. All his ashes gone except for the hand full that Sam wears in a small leather satchel around his neck. Sam hasn't really slept since then, hasn't really eaten either, and it shows.

He doesn't hear the djinn when it gets the drop on him, and he doesn't really have the strength, or maybe the will, to fight it off. It grips his head, presses one cold hand to his forehead, and he knows it hears his wish, the only thought that's been in his mind for weeks.

Sam's eyes close, blackness pulls him down.

…….

Dean walks up to Sam from the direction of the gas station with a lazy swagger and two beers in his hand. He gives one to Sam and it's nice and cold in his hand.

Dean lifts his, takes a long swallow, and then licks his lower lip, watching Sam all the time. Sam rests his beer on the hood of the Impala, ignoring the glare that Dean shoots his way.

He grips his older brother's hip in his large hand and pulls him into the space between his legs.

"Dean." He murmurs his brother's name just before leaning down and kissing him.

It's slow and familiar, and despite Dean's swaggering approach before, he melts against Sam. It's the kind of kiss a person shares with someone they've known and loved for a long time, maybe even a lifetime. Sam's hand finds a resting spot in the back pockets of Dean's worn jeans. He pulls his brother in tighter against him with the one hand he still has. Dean groans, deepens the kiss and wraps his fingers in Sam's shaggy, sweat damp hair.

When Dean pulls back, they're both breathless and flushed.

"We've got to get going, long way to go to the next job." Dean says, but he's already leaning back in towards Sam.

Sam grins as Dean's lips press against his. He kisses Sam hard and deep.

There's a tickling in the back of his mind, the vague feeling of something being off. But Sam doesn't care, ignores it.

The only thing that matters is the feel of Dean's body pressed against his, the heat of the sun beating down on them both, the purr of the Impala he's leaning against, and the miles they still have to drive.

………

Sam dies three days later, but it's a lifetime to him.

A lifetime of hunts and lovemaking, hauntings and sex in crappy hotel rooms. A lifetime of saving lives and loving his brother and the two of them on the road, of calling in Bobby for the hunts they need help on.

Sam dies alone, but he doesn't know it.

To him, he dies beside his brother, one last hunt. The demon dead, but Sam and Dean take a few too many hits. But dying together, dying fighting, is an okay way to die in Sam's opinion. He dies with a firm grip on his brother, breathing in each other's breaths until there are no more. 

……..

Bobby's the one who finds him.

It's too late to save John's boys. Like always, where one has gone, the other has followed; he knows exactly why Sam went on this hunt and it makes him feel sick to his stomach. Some part of him wonders what Sam wished for; his mother never murdered, John never having made that deal, or was it just for Dean? Was Sam's wish just for a healthy brother to crawl over the country looking for hunts with?

It breaks his heart to burn the body of John's youngest boy. The last of the Winchesters gone.

He watches as Sam's body burns, and he can't say it doesn't hurt so bad it's hard to breath. The boys were likes sons to him, damn it, and he'd told John a million times that he'd help them as much as he could.

But when Sam had told Bobby about Dean and the doctor's diagnosis Bobby had known there was nothing he could do.

So he stands and watches as the youngest brother burns, turning to ash on the cold cement floor. 

And so this is how the Winchester brothers end; no great battle or demons to fight, just a disease and a broken heart to lead them down.

………………………………...  
The end.


End file.
